So pervasive has this habit become that the fact that the replacement of the Taliban regime would be a boon for us -- one factory manufacturing terrorists less, a major defeat for militant Islam, the patrons and guides of the terrorists either crushed or made busy protecting themselves, fissures in Pakistani society widened -- all this was all but obscured in the anxiety to discover the latest shred by which the government could be pilloried, or the gloominess confirmed.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to foreign or security affairs. Over the decades, an entire industry has grown up whose sole function is to frighten us about the future. I well remember the seemingly learned essays that the Economic and Political Weekly used to carry during the Green Revolution days. They were written by prominent economists and we had to mug them up for our exams. The new seed varieties will increase productivity per acre, the argument went. That will make land more valuable. The rich ‘kulaks’ -- a much favoured term then -- will buy up the holdings of small and marginal farmers. The latter will sink into being landless labourers... Progressive immiserisation of the masses... The Green Revolution will turn red... What happened in fact? Productivity did increase. Land did become more valuable. So valuable that no one would sell it...

The ‘Dunkel Draft’, the new regime on Intellectual Property Rights, allowing foreign investment in the insurance sector, the much-denounced ‘terminator seeds’… The ‘debate’ on each has followed the identical course.

Bleakness is deduced whichever of the opposites comes to pass. If the West gives aid; ‘It is trying to entangle us in the coils of international capitalism.’ If it does not, "It is heartless, to say nothing of access to its markets, it is denying us even aid." If the multinationals invest, ‘They are taking over.’ If they do not, ‘But where is the investment?’ If caps for foreign investment are raised, ‘Multinationals will swallow us up.’ When evidence suggests that they are themselves on the run – that these companies are being threatened by newcomers every other day, ‘But all the more reason for them to invade territories in which they can establish themselves more easily.’ If fertiliser subsidies are lowered, ‘This is an anti-farmer Government.’ If they are not, ‘Chemical fertilisers and pesticides are poisoning our land, our rivers, our bodies. The Government is subsidising cancer.’

For years, papers had been writing about the pollution that Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses had been causing. As the Delhi Administration had done little in the matter other than keep asking for time, the Supreme Court eventually ordered that a class of the worst polluters be taken off the road. The Hindustan Times story now was, "School children to be affected by SC order"!

Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam was delivering the first lecture in the Ideas that have worked series that I had started under the auspices of the Administrative Reforms Department.³ He had just given a gripping account of what it had been to work under prominent scientists Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan and Brahmaprakash; of what it had been to participate in projects to build rockets that would carry satellites into space; of what it had been to be present at the launching of those satellites, of being present for Pokharan-II. "So, we have a rocket," a member of the audience began. "But what has that done for the common man?" Kalam had to justify rocket research by recalling how it had helped develop the Reddy-Kalam stent for heart patients!

As the controversy built up, I studied the proposal. The case against it was patently a contrivance. I took up the matter with a prominent ideologue of such critiques. "There has been a mistake," he said. "It was thought that this was a project of Pramod Mahajan [Union Minister for Information Technology, Communications and Parliamentary Affairs]. That is why the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] decided that it must not go through." It had turned out that the sponsor of the project had actually been some other minister – indeed, one who was in the very good books of the RSS. But, supposing the Sankhya Vahini had in fact been Mahajan's project. Was that a good enough reason to kill it? "In any case, the pamphlet was not written by anyone in the RSS," the person explained. "It was written by an ex-civil servant." But the high personage had lent his name to the specious argumentation. It is precisely because Dattopant Thengdi had lent his name to the critique that it had been so consequential. "I am myself going to write a note to Dattopantji on this pamphlet," the person said. "Send me the points that strike you." But the controversy killed the project.

In 1993, Motorola had approached India with a proposal to set up a plant to produce computer chips. They wanted some facilities. We spurned them. They packed their bags and went over to Malaysia. Today, Malaysia is the world’s leading exporter of computer chips,⁶ and we are importers… Our activists drove out Monsanto, and its experiments on genetically modified cotton.⁷ Today, 40 per cent of China’s cotton is produced from those seeds. They have obviated the need for pesticides. Productivity per acre is almost 35-40 per cent higher than the varieties we use, with the result that our textile industry is at an even greater handicap.

Such prophecies fulfil themselves. We frighten ourselves about the future. As a result, we are less able to focus on the task at hand. And, so the prophecy comes true. In India, being in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has become yet another occasion for us to frighten ourselves and to accuse each other of selling the country’s interests down the drain. In China, the prospect of joining WTO was converted into a timetable -- for implementing reforms.

Respective tasks

It is nobody’s case that the Press should not be critical. Criticising a government and pillorying it is most certainly not ‘anti-national’. It is the media’s job to keep governments on their toes. But, at the same time, it is an error to mistake contrariness for independence. Correspondingly, it is the job of governments to explain the reasons that have led them to a policy or measure. But, that done, it is the duty of governments to go ahead -- in the face of criticism if necessary. Waiting for a consensus to emerge will be to wait forever -- specially in view of what being out of office has come to mean in India today: that because the person or group is in the Opposition, its job is to denounce, it is to block everything anyone in office proposes to do; even the things that the person was doing when he was in office; in fact, even the things that he is doing where he is in office today. In a word, governments must explain, but, having set out the facts and reasons, it is their duty to do what the country requires. They must proceed in the confidence that 10 years later there will be a consensus around the new configuration that would have come about because of the measures that are being taken now.

As far as the media are concerned, the point is not that they must support what some government is doing. The point is about presumption. The presumption that an Indian government just will not be able to handle a situation.

The presumption has meant that, for the media, India cannot be in the right -- whether on terrorism in Punjab, or in combating the assault on Kashmir, or with regard to the demographic invasion from Bangladesh. The presumption that leads commentators to see virtue in someone else doing something and when India does the same thing -- when it even attempts to do same thing -- it makes our commentators detect fascism, communalism and evil. Indian liberals are awe struck when they see Muslims go through the postures of namaz: ‘What devotion, what surrender,’ they exclaim as ten thousand Muslims in the local Jama Masjid bend and rise in unison. But, when Hindus flock to their temples in thousands, or when thirty million of them gather at the sangam for the Kumbh mela, the very persons sneer, ‘Look at those ignoramuses, steeped neck deep in superstition. How will you ever get these people to develop?’ When Bill Clinton was not able to get two of his nominees to be appointed as Attorneys General because they had employed an unregistered alien for the briefest of times, that was taken as evidence of the great respect the American system has for law. Here, whenever a government has made some effort -- however small -- to send Bangladeshis back, a howl has been raised, so great a howl that governments have given up making even an effort to deport illegal immigrants.

As India cannot be right, the presumption that everyone who speaks up for the country, everyone who stands up for it, who risks his life for it, also cannot be right. Recall the total fabrications that were put out about ‘atrocities committed by the Army’ in Kashmir -- fabrications nailed in the Press Council report, Crisis and Credibility.⁸ Recall the way self-serving, backdated letters of a Brigadier were used by the press to put the armed forces in the wrong during the Kargil war.

The presumption finally that every development is liable to work against India.

This addiction to the negative is compounded by laziness. Anyone can say anything. So long as it is negative, it will get him headlines in the media. A natural disaster occurs -- an earthquake in the Kumaon hills or Gujarat, a cyclone tears a region apart in Orissa or Gujarat, and Sonia Gandhi is sure to arrive. And on each occasion, she has the same comment: the government has completely failed to provide adequate relief to the victims. On not a single occasion has she documented her charge. But each time she gets headlines, ‘Sonia blasts Government.’ Natwar Singh and other spokespersons of the Congress, after the May 1998 atomic tests -- condemning the Government one day for betraying the traditions of Buddha, Ashoka and Gandhi, and the next on the ground that it had not yet taken the requisite steps for ‘atomic weaponisation’: headlines on both days. The drivel of Kapil Sibal and others during the Kargil war...

On December 13, 2001, terrorists entered the premises of Parliament. Guns, grenades, RDX -- it was a huge assault. The next day, The Hindu carried on its front page, in bold type, the statement of Syed Salahuddin, chief of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) from Pakistan: the attack has been engineered by Indian intelligence agencies, the paper reported him saying, so as to pressurise Parliament into passing the anti-terrorist ordinance, and to pressurise the international alliance against terrorism "to bracket the Kashmir freedom struggle with terrorism"! The same day, opposite the edit-page that paper carried a dispatch -- again in bold type -- from a conspicuous commentator-correspondent: ‘Who called in the Army?’ he asked; had the "well established procedures" been followed for this "entirely irregular requisitioning of Army units?" he wanted to know. What an occasion for Constitutionalism!

It is as if press persons and others in the media feel that, by printing something negative -- even if it be drivel of this kind -- they prove that they are independent; that, conversely, were they to say, or even report anything positive they would be damned as having ‘sold themselves’, as having become chamchas. Indeed, so pervasive is this habit that it seems that they are afraid not just that others will conclude that they have ‘sold out’, but that in their own eyes they would have done so.

There is thus, first the laziness -- anything anyone says is just swallowed and vomited; specially if what that person says casts doubt, specially if he hurls an allegation. Recall the play that Ajit Jogi’s calumny got: "Three officers -- one in the Prime Minister's Office, one in the Disinvestment Department, one in my Government -- have pocketed Rs. 100 Crore in the [Bharat Aluminium Company] BALCO disinvestment."⁹ In no country would that kind of calumny, especially when made by that kind of a person, be reproduced – here it became headline news. Where is that calumny today? Actually, we know where it is; "...the facts herein show that a fair, just and equitable procedure has been followed in carrying out this disinvestment," the Supreme Court has held in its judgement on the BALCO case. "The allegations of lack of transparency or that the decision was taken in a hurry or that there has been an arbitrary exercise of power are without any basis. We strongly deprecate such unfounded averments which have been made by an officer of the State..." But what is the remedy for the immense harm that was done by those who broadcast those allegations -- without the slightest examination?

Next, there is the sudden switch. A dacoit is caught; suddenly, he becomes an ‘under-trial’ – till yesterday the Press was full of jeers about the government’s ham-handedness because of which it was not being able to apprehend him; the moment he is caught, the same Press is after the police and jail officials for not respecting his rights.

One day the question is, "But why are you not talking to Pakistan? After all, what is the harm in just talking?" The moment a step is taken to talk, suddenly the question becomes, "You had said you won’t talk to Pakistan so long as cross-border terrorism continues. It has not stopped. Why are you thinking of talking to Musharraf now? In any case, what has come out of your talks in the past?"

When the hijacked Indian aircraft IC-814¹⁰ was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, media were full of the shouting of the relatives of the passengers. This barrage, I can testify from personal knowledge, weighed heavily on the key decision-makers. It was one of the main factors that led them to decide that there was no alternative but to accept the demands of the hijackers and to release the Pakistani terrorists that the hijackers had demanded. The moment the terrorists were released, the same newspapers were pontificating about the ‘abject surrender to terrorism’, they were contrasting the pusillanimity of the Indian government with the example of Israel, they were lecturing the same government they had, by their selective coverage, pressurised with reminders of the policy of the US -- ‘No negotiations with terrorists.’

The moment there is some massacre by terrorists, our papers are full of pictures of corpses. But I heard some of the same editors remark with admiration at the way the American media had covered the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon: ‘Not one gory scene, not one image that could dishearten the people... Look at the way they are building up Bush. After all, his IQ could not have shot up all of a sudden. They were making fun of him till yesterday, and suddenly he is being made to come across as such a decisive, knowledgeable leader, as one in full control...’

Socialism for the masses. Patriotism for other countries! As in government so in media: there is paralysis by analysis. Recall, China during the Gulf War: it quietly got the post-Tiananmen sanctions lifted; here in India we encoiled ourselves in acrimonious accusations about whether we should give America refuelling facilities. The accusations about offering to assist in the campaign against the Taliban regime ended only because the Taliban collapsed so soon, and so ignominiously. In a word, while other countries get down to doing what their interest requires, we debate the alternatives to death even before we have chosen one of them.

3. Dr. Kalam, the then Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, delivered the first lecture on March 11, 2000 in New Delhi. It was organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances in collaboration with the Civil Services Officers’ Institute (CSOI) and the Government of Andhra Pradesh. See "India Needs Double Digit GDP to Remove Poverty : Dr. Kalam", Link

5. Sankhya Vahini was a joint venture project that envisages a high-speed data communication network to serve as India’s high bandwidth Internet backbone. Sankhya Vahini India Limited (SVIL), with an authorised share capital of Rs.1,000 crores, is a collaborative venture between the Department of Telecommunications/Department of Telecom Services (DoT/DTS), some premier educational institutions, the Department of Electronics (DoE), the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of the United States, through a U.S.-based company called IUNet Inc. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed on October 16, 1998. Dr. V S Arunachalam and Dr. Raj Reddy, both attached to the CMU, are principle designers of the network. See, for instance, "Sankhya Vahini and some questions," Frontline, Chennai, vol. 17, no. 11, May 27 – June 09, 2000. Link.

6. See "Developing SE Asia: Singapore and Malaysia", Link.